Workout Wisdom

By: In: Health and Fitness, Skiing

 
 
 
The Crossfit workout regimen is making quite a splash in fitness circles, of late. One of my online ski buddies & FB connections made mention of this and I checked it out, and it appeals.

Skinet has picked up on cross fit:

Crossfit is an all-out, holy-crap-I-can’t-go-any-harder work out. Variety is the name of the game, with anything from plyometics (explosive movements that increase speed and power), to weightlifting, to running. It will challenge your stamina, strength, and stability, leaving you sweating in a matter of minutes. This may sound like hell, but it’s not—it’s fun

Crossfit aims to workout the entire body across all sorts of different fitness criteria.

However, not all are enamored with Crossfit: go to the link above and read the comments.

When I was in high school wrestling, we had a two day cycle, dividing my fellow wrestlers into a lightweights and heavyweights. On day A, the weight room would be setup for the light weights. I forget the timings, but the idea was on getting as many repetitions as possible in during the time allowed, and then moving quickly with minimal pause between stations. Group B would spend that time in the mat room A-B-C wrestling (whistle blows, A&B wrestle and C officiates, whistle blows, B&C get ready to wrestle and A officiates, etc). The idea was on endurance and not just cardiovascular fitness (however, we did run a lot).

That is the idea I try to bring to my workout sessions. I may be working weights, but that is no excuse to take it slow.

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On Balance

By: In: Health and Fitness, Skiing

 
 
 
One of the key factors in ski & snowboarding health is balance. Often times when we think of physical fitness for the snow we think of getting our legs muscles up to snuff and our cardiovascular fitness up.

However, who thinks of balance? I know the ski publications do, they often have many exercises aimed at improving one’s ability to keep one’s self balanced. However, in general at the gym most people don’t seem to think of balance you will see people:

  • spinning RPMs on the bikes
  • pounding miles on treadmills
  • pumping iron
  • working the ellipticals

and so on.

However, how often do we see people working exercises that challenge their balancing ability? Very rare. In fact, a person’s ability to balance is often derided, for example, the commercial implying it unmanly to perform feats of balance (unless it is someone else running down a football field). I say rubbish, I say the ability of a person to tippy-toe in field of green without a football translates nicely to a person being able to maintain their balance in a field of moguls on a 40% slope.

I am not going to discuss specifics on challenging your balance you can google that up, but I am trying to remind all of us that working on our balance should be included with our strength and cardiovascular training.

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Exercise Exercise Exercise!

By: In: The Sharp Edge

 
 
 
I remember seeing clips of a sales training video featuring Vince Lombardi talking about winning and the principles he thought winning everywhere requires.

In this video he addresses the importance of being physically fit. Yeah, you got it, a football coach talking to salesmen on the importance of being fit (there is more to the video, but the clip I saw he was specifically addressing physical fitness), and it seems odd, but it is not.

In my life, I have veered from decent and good physical fitness to poor. That bouncing back and forth has empirically shown me a few things to be true:
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Ski Conditioning

By: In: Health and Fitness, Skiing

Skiing & health

On Physical Conditioning

Right now I am watching the downhill portion of the Men’s super-combined ski event. The reason I do not flag this as an Olympics related post is because I want to focus more on the idea of the physical conditioning required for downhill skiing.

Watch those Olympic skiers and watch them when they come to a stop, they are a huffing and a puffing!
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Skiing to Maintain Our Health.

By: In: Health and Fitness

Skiing to Maintain Our Health!

Most often when we talk about downhill skiing and health we talk about injuries. However, skiers know downhill skiing is an active sport; this may surprise some, after all most of the energy harnessed in downhill skiing is gravitational. The non-skier may assume skiing takes the same amount of exercise as falling into one’s easy chair.

Well since you are reading this article, I assume you know that is FALSE! Downhill skiing is a physically active sport. While it is true, most of a skier’s speed comes from gravity to harness gravity enjoyably and safely requires physical exertion. Staying up requires athletic balance, avoiding obstacles, skiing bumps, running gates require split second timing, planning a route down the hill requires planning, and if a skier has to move over flat or uphill terrain they must provide the required energy. Skiing requires more exertion than plopping down in front of the TV with a sixpack of one’s favorite beverage.
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